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Topic: your experiences in moving to 10g? (Read 10303 times)

I am going to move to 10g batches and was hoping to learn from others who have done so already. I will have to drill the pot I bought off Amazon (60 qt stainless) and then fix some sort of pick up tube. But other than that I just don't know if there is big alterations to recipes, cooling, etc.

So what are your experiences in moving to 10g? What part of the process seemed more of a pain? What would you do different?

Make sure you rig up some type of ball valve, not just a pick up tube. Maybe that is what you meant. Your chilling times will be different but a 25 ft piece of copper IC will work for a 10 gallon batch.

The only real downside of having ten gallon batches is having to carry two full fermenters around instead of one.

My experiences:As was stated, 10g is heavy so try to have a solution. I put my pot on a utility cart to lauter and then roll it to my burner. 13-14G+ is heavy!You need to collect about 13-14G to boil down to 10.5-11G. In a 60Q pot, slight boil-overs are almost a given. Be prepared.....High gravity beers can get messy so stick below 1.060ish as stated if using a 10G cooler.My 1/2" x 50' IC does well to chill to ale temps but I have to put the kettle in my chest freezer to get down to lagering temps. Very heavy to pick up over the wall! I plan to experiment with frozen and sanitized soda bottles per Euge in the near future.Transfer to 2 x 5G containers is tricky. I use a sanitized pitcher and paint strainers.I LOVE to experiment with 2 different yeasts. It always amazes me how different the beers turn out.That's all I can think of now.

Dave

EDIT: Just thought of 2 more. I've been making a lot of lagers so doing 90 minute boils. You can collect less for a 60 minute boil and avoid boil-overs. You can also collect less and add some water during transfer to primary. Just double check the adjustment in your brewing software.

Pumps and valves are fine but I made do for years by transferring chilled wort with a pitcher to the fermenters until the kettle was light enough to lift easily. In an ideal situation a three-tier gravity system is what I'd shoot for and skip pumps entirely.

Everybody else covered the mechanics so here's my take. Make a starter 5-7 days ahead of time and plan on stepping it up twice. You're gonna need a lot more yeast but you can still get by with one vial or smack pack if you do it right.I pretty much just doubled my ingredients when I went to 10 gallon batches years ago, but after a few batches you'll be able to tweak that to compensate for your system. I know that a 10 gallon batch of Imperial stout with 45 pounds of malt is much less efficient than a 5 gallon batch that may only require 18 pounds of malt.There are advantages to larger bath brewing if you do it right and have the right equipment. It takes me 2 hours less to brew 10 gallons with my 3 tiered system than it did to brew 5 gallons with my single turkey fryer setup. I have twice as much beer, and as stated before I can make 2 different beers from one brewing session. The disadvantage is that I have twice as much beer to drink.